Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Hong Kong

Comilang v. Director of Immigration

Court of Final Appeal, Hong Kong · Hong Kong · 2019-04-04 · National court

Citation: [2019] HKCFA 10
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided against the migrant side

Question

May mothers without residence rights stay in Hong Kong to care for their children who are permanent residents?

What the court decided

No. The Basic Law and Bill of Rights do not give a right to remain; immigration control is protected by a reservation.

In plain language

Former domestic workers from the Philippines and Indonesia had children who are Hong Kong permanent residents. They asked to stay to raise them. The highest court said they had no right to stay.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Mantan pekerja rumah tangga dari Filipina dan Indonesia punya anak yang menjadi penduduk tetap Hong Kong. Mereka meminta tinggal untuk membesarkan anak-anak itu. Pengadilan tertinggi menyatakan mereka tidak berhak tinggal.

Pertanyaan: Bolehkah ibu tanpa hak tinggal tetap di Hong Kong untuk merawat anak mereka yang penduduk tetap?

What happened afterwards

2019-04-04: Judgment.

Sources

HKLII

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/hk-comilang-2019/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.